The case of Kian delos Santos
No test is tough enough for the race to the Capitol His rival, for effect. Anak ng put a hand on my shoulder. Cong. Rimpy should even up the score by a photo showing him leading a culling session in that town with Board Member Pol Balingit in tow. Never mind if the bird flu disease is transmissible to humans. For Delta and Rimpy no threats of avian pest infection is a hindrance to winning the Capitol.
BTW, despite the poultry scare we receive reports that diners flock to the Max Restaurant outlets in local Malls and in CSF to enjoy their weekly treat of Max chicken.
I WILL not leave it to the court to decide the fate of the three policemen who are embroiled in the death of Kian delos Santos, the 17year-old from Caloocan City whom they insisted was a drug runner. Not unless Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II inhibits himself from the case, as Sen. Risa Hontiveros suggested.
She questioned his impartiality after he described delos Santos as “collateral d am age” in the government’s war against drugs. Last Friday, murder and torture complaints were filed against PO3 Arnel Oares and PO1s Jerwin Cruz and Jeremias Pareda, their station commander Chief Insp. Amor Cerillo and several “John Does.”
Oares, who led the operation in delos Santos’s community, was tagged as the one who pulled the trigger. If they think they can count on Philippine National Police Chief Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa and President Rodrigo Duterte to have their backs, they better think again.
During the inauguration of a solar panel factory in Batangas, the President told the crowd that he ordered Bato to arrest the policemen “and place them in jail to wait for inquest” as soon as he heard what happened to delos Santos, which meant that he, too, thought something was amiss during the operation.
“Now, let us be clear on this… I said I would protect those who are doing their duty. I never promised to protect those who are supposedly engaged in doing their duty but committing a crime in the process— abuses. That cannot be done,” Duterte reiterated. The presidential condemnation was a welcome far cry from his bombastic rhetoric against drug personalities and tendentious vows to protect the men and women in blue since he declared war on illegal drugs.
The turnaround must have caught his lapdogs and some followers off-guard as they continue to insist that the whole thing was blown out of proportion by the media. That, or they haven’t yet received the memo from Malacañang.
Perhaps, to them, the shooting of an unarmed high school student in the back by the very persons who are supposed to protect him is a banal matter.
As for the respondents, the odds are not stacked in their favor.
During the Senate hearing earlier in the week, they admitted that they were only able to confirm the boy’s alleged links to the illegal drug trade after they killed him, using social media as their basis for confirmation.
The policemen stood there, facing the panel of legislators-turned-interrogators, looking like fish out of water, floundering in their attempt to reconcile their version of events with what was caught on a security camera that fatal night. They never probably thought that it would come to this. That it would be their turn to stare down the barrel of a gun, so to speak. The public backlash was immediate, fueled by the outrage and the indignation over the discovery that delos Santos was kneeling when he was shot from behind, contrary to the policemen’s claims that he had tried to engage them in a gunfight. “That is murder,” the President rightly pointed out.